Life in Patagonia. 99 



frontier, and was always employed as a scout in 

 times of Indian warfare. He was also a celebrated 

 liorse-thief. His horse- stealing propensities were 

 ineradicable, and had to be winked at on account 

 of his usefulness ; so that he was left in a great 

 measure to his own devices. He A\ras, in fact, a fox 

 hired to act as watch-dog to the colony in times of 

 danger ; and though the victims of his numberless 

 thefts had always been anxious to wreak personal 

 vengeance on him, his vulpine sagacity had so far 

 enabled him to escape them all. My interest in him 

 arose from the fact that he was the son of a man 

 whose name fissures in Aro-entine history. Sosa's 

 father was an illiterate gaucho — a man of the plains 

 — possessing faculties so keen that to ordinary 

 beings his feats of vision and hearing, and his sense of 

 direction on the monotonous pampas, seemed almost 

 miraculous. As he also possessed other qualities 

 suitable to a leader of men in a semi-savage region, 

 he rose in time to the command of the south-western 

 frontier, where his numerous victories over the 

 Indians gave him so great a prestige that the 

 jealousy of the Dictator Eosas — the Nero of South 

 America, as he was called by his enemies — was 

 roused, and at his instigation Sosa was removed by 

 means of a cup of poison. The son, though in all 

 other respects a degenerate being, inherited his 

 father's wonderful senses. One instance of his 

 keen-sightedness which I heard struck me as very 

 curious. In 1861 Sosa had found it prudent to 

 disappear for a season from the colony, and in the 



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